


Under The Gathering Storm

by but_i_am_a_villain



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ann is sad and it is raining, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Feelings, Inspired by Anne Choma's companion book, Letters, Married Couple, One Sad Wife, the wives are Always Sad for some reason, which makes her wife sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 02:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_i_am_a_villain/pseuds/but_i_am_a_villain
Summary: A letter arrives at Shibden.Inspired by events described in Anne Choma's "Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister."





	Under The Gathering Storm

She’d run up the stairs as fast as she could manage, boots clattering madly against the ancient wood that made up shabby old Shibden. If she were a little more tempered, perhaps a little more subtle, she would have walked, tiptoed even, in order to keep her arrival  _ calm.  _ But Anne Lister was not tempered, and she was not subtle, especially on matters such as this.

Thunder clapped outside as she reached for the door handle.  _ Damn,  _ the weather was only making matters worse. The noise and the shaking of the house, the draft from the wind and the raindrops that managed to sneak their way through the windows, it was surely only adding to the chaos she’d been informed of when she walked into the sitting room. Damn nature for picking this day to be wretched. This wasn’t fair, this wasn’t right. Damn it all. Damn it all.

Hastily removing her hat from her head, which she’d forgotten to do upon entering the estate, Anne kept the item clutched in her free hand while the other took the door handle with some odd amount of force. She wasn’t angry, she reminded herself, not with anyone here. She was angry with the situation, with the weather, with this infuriating coincidence, not with anyone in the estate.

Not with the Captain, who’d been asleep in his chair when she’d entered. Not with her sister, who had glared at her when she’d come in wet with the rain. Not at her aunt, who answered her when she’d asked why her wife was not in the sitting room with the rest of the family. 

Not at Ann, who had taken to bed at the arrival of a letter. 

No, she could not be cross with any of them. So she ought not to let Ann see how her expression was screwed with irritation, and she better try to mask how her hands shook and her brow furrowed the way they had when she’d been given the news.

A letter addressed to her and Miss Walker both. A letter with no sender. 

_ Poor dear,  _ Aunt Anne had said,  _ she took one look at it and disappeared. She’s made nervous so easy. _

She opened the door, willing her rage to melt away as she stepped into the bedroom.

“...Ann?”

There was a lump under the covers, seemingly immobile and not entirely alive, that must have been her wife. Her form was indiscernible under the blankets, save for the blonde curls spilling out over the pillows. Anne had taken to running her fingers through such curls just before falling asleep, though now they looked frazzled and unkempt. The unevenness of the covers revealed that the woman lying motionless on the mattress was still dressed, as a satin, pink fabric hung lamely over the edge of the bed. She must have had her shoes on, even. 

Stepping fully into the room, Anne chose to close the door behind her and toss her hat onto the vanity, then moved to remained posted by the side of the bed. She attempted again to engage with her wife, peering curiously at her as she did so.

“...Ann. Are you up?”

The call of her wife’s name did little to rouse the younger woman from her state of distress; she didn’t so much as turn to see Anne as she entered. The only sign of life from the little heiress was a soft whimper that left her lips as another crack of thunder shook the estate. The sight of it all made Anne’s heart ache, and she thought to cursed the storm above them yet again as she moved over to the edge of the bed.

“...I got those ribbons, like you asked, from the shop. It rained, you were wise to stay in.” She was rambling, trying to fill the silence that her wife had created in hopes that it would get her to engage, and in subsequent hopes that it would quell the anger still boiling inside her, “Surely the wind would have given you some kind of a cold, and I know you’d be loathe to let me kiss you then if you were all stuffed up and aching…anyhow, the ribbons are downstairs, I left them with Marian, who made all kinds of fuss about the mud and the boots-- you know how she can be, though it wasn’t even raining that bad by the time I got in. It’s only just picked up now.”

Still nothing. Ann never turned to look at her. With a sigh, Miss Lister elected to forgo pleasantries if her wife was not interested in returning them.

“...has there been a letter?”

Another whimper, and Ann drew her legs up towards her chest. Anne could feel the movement shift the mattress. At least they were getting somewhere.

She stood and rounded the corner of the bed, coming to the other side to face her wife head on. When she crouched beside the bedpost, she felt her heart sink further into the pit of her stomach, and guilt bubble up in its place.

Tears had long since stained Miss Walker’s fair cheeks, leaving crystallized rivers in tracks on her skin and a redness in her eyes that became fresh again with every irritable crack of thunder. In one hand, the young woman clutched the fabric of the blankets that stayed wrapped around the pair on chilly nights, and in the spring had been used as nothing more than a pillow for their love making. In the other hand, a half-crumpled piece of paper, read and reread far too many times.

Damn it all, damn it all.

“...oh, Ann…” Reaching into the covers as though to free her wife from a self-made prison, Anne rested her hand on her wife’s cheek and began to brush away old tears. The movement was more habitual than she was willing to admit; they’d had many, many days like this.

“...what’s happened?”

There was a pause, a silence again filled only by the rain striking against the windowpane. Storms made poor Miss Walker nervous, something Anne had learned on one of her many early visits to Crow Nest. Thunder often startled the little blonde, which made her back ache, which sent her to bed. But this whole affair was about more than the rain. This distress concerned a different storm entirely, one that stirred off in the distance and came to rest over Shibden when mysterious letters appeared.

Finally, Ann shifted, leaning into her wife’s touch and blinking away new tears.

“...there  _ was  _ a letter. For both of us.”

Anne held her tongue, refraining from saying she’d already known that much.

“And what about it has upset you?”

An unwise question, it seemed; that sent Ann back into a fit of distress, as she shook her head and tried to pull away again. Anne refused to let her, staying ever close by moving to sit by her wife’s side. She pulled the blankets down even further, attempting to coax the woman out of hiding.

“...I’ll read it, then, since it is addressed to me?”

“ _ No,  _ Anne--”

“It  _ was  _ a letter for me, that came to  _ my  _ estate, so I think I shall.”

“You  _ can’t!” _

“I do think I get letters everyday, so I most certainly can.” 

“ _ Anne--” _

All teasing put aside, Miss Lister reached down and began to pry the paper from her wife’s grasp. For all her insistence and protest, Ann didn’t keep much of a grip on the thing, and instead chose to curl further into the pillows the moment the letter left her grasp. Anne watched her retreat with a saddened stare, before turning her attention to the paper now in her possession. 

She opened her mouth to read aloud from the script, assuming that whatever poorly worded scrap of nonsense that had been delivered was just like all the rest. Not long into the message, she realized she was mistaken.

“To the patrons of...of the Shibden Hall Whore House.”

She ceased to repeat the letter any further, and took to reading in silence instead.

_ I hereby extend my offer of marriage to Miss Ann Walker, the newest item in ‘Miss’ Lister’s collection. Should the Gentleman so chose to relinquish her to me, she will find a comfortable life away from the jack, complete with restoration of her status as a woman. Enclosed is a ring befitting such a bride from the hallowed halls of Shibden. _

Stuck in wax at the bottom of the note was a piece of straw, tied haphazardly into the shape of a ring. There was no signature.

The anger Anne had suppressed upon entering the bedroom resurfaced.

“...this is nothing.” she announced, reaching down to find Ann’s hand and give it a reassuring squeeze, “This is some kind of...of stupid jest. Likely written by one of the tenants, probably paid one of the other men in town to scrawl it for him...it doesn’t mean anything.”

She didn’t mention how it enraged her, or how the dig at her family’s wealth made her insides burn. She said nothing about the title of  _ gentleman,  _ or the word  _ jack  _ that had been thrown in her face more than once. It was nothing. It was nothing.

Ann whimpered once more beside her.

“It’s someone who  _ knows.”  _ she said lamely, “It has my name in it...w-what do they mean by collection? Why is it a  _ proposal?” _

“It’s  _ nothing.  _ It’s not a proposal.”

“It has the word  _ marriage  _ in the first line! I  _ read  _ it, I’m not stupid--”

“It’s  _ not  _ a proposal. Not a real one. So it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Anne!”

The shrill sound of her wife’s voice, at a pitch that indicated more than simple frustration, caused Miss Lister to pause. She lowered the letter away from her face, allowed herself to sigh, and looked back at her wife, waiting to hear what she needed to say.

Ann, for her part, sat up and blinked away a new set of tears.

“Why did someone send a letter like this? Why are you...acting like it’s  _ okay?” _

Meeting her wife’s eyes, Anne forced a sullen smile.

“...it is not the first time a letter like this has been delivered. I suppose I’m...used to it.”

Letters had come before, more often in her youth, with marriage proposals and rings and declaration of love for the odd lady of Shibden Hall. Plenty of letters had called her names, insulted and degraded her, threatened to expose her, and so on. She’d grown numb to it over time, and occasionally found the delivery of such letters amusing. But  _ this  _ was the first note directed at not just her, but her wife. This was the first one that called Ann by name and bullied her too. Perhaps it had even been written by some idiotic member of the young woman’s family, an attempt to frighten her off and send her crawling back to their sons in need of a bride, in need of  _ money.  _

She clutched the letter tighter, letting it crumple in her hand as the wind howled outside.

“...there are those who believe that my life...the way I was  _ born  _ to live...is some kind of a jest. They think sending these proposals counts as some...grand form of amusement. They’ve done it ever since I was young...when I was...seen with other women. I believe that’s what the writer means by  _ collection... _ and by sending such a horrid note.”

Taking a deep breath, she forced her rising anger back down yet again, choosing instead to toss the letter from her hands and lay beside her wife. 

“...but...lucky for the both of us...we no longer have room on our hands for marriage bands.” she whispered, hoping to earn a smile from her wife as she toyed with the ring around Ann’s finger. “...I am sorry you encountered the letter before I did...we’ll burn it. We’ll be done with the whole mess of it. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means someone could keep sending those letters.” Ann whispered, “How often did you get them before?”

“...not very often.” That wasn’t entirely a lie, was it?

“But...you still  _ did.  _ I don’t want...I don’t want people thinking this is  _ improper,  _ that what we’ve done is wrong--”

“It  _ isn’t  _ wrong.” Anne insisted, kissing her wife’s ring, “What’s wrong is...the way they view it. Whatever man wrote that, whatever... _ slob  _ of a creature scrawled that out, is merely...jealous.”

“...jealous?” 

“Yes, jealous! That I...that  _ we... _ have found the perfect happiness together. Surely there is no one else nearly as at peace as we are, and undoubtedly that...upsets them. So they scratch out cruel letters and send them off in the hopes of brightening their own days...and it won’t work. It never will.” 

“...but they still send them.”

Anne sighed again, pulling her wife’s head up towards her chest and cradling her there for a moment. 

“...yes.” she murmured, “They still send them.” 

Silence attempted to creep back into the room, threatening Anne with the uncertainty of her next steps. Ann stayed tucked against her chest, the letter remained discarded on the floor, and the wind still howled out the window. She wasn’t sure what the remedy for this situation was supposed to be just yet, so she began to apologize.

“...I’m sorry.” she whispered, kissing the top of Ann’s head the way she so often did, “I know these things aren’t...easy...and with the weather the way that it is, I should have come home sooner. I’d have caught the letter--”

“I didn’t want you to  _ catch  _ anything.” Ann mumbled, “...I don’t want you hiding things from me.  _ Please.  _ I just...I didn’t know what it meant…”

“...all it means is that...we’ll burn it, and move on. It doesn’t mean anything else…”

“...alright.”

_ Alright. _

That was enough to end things for the moment. Ann wasn’t usually one to cave so easy, but the look on her face told Miss Lister that the poor girl was tired, drained by the events of the evening, and wasn’t willing to think about the whole mess any longer. In an hour or two, maybe Anne would rise from the bed and go and burn the horrid message that had started all of this. For the moment, though, she stayed at her wife’s side, trying to think how best they’d weather the storm. 

**Author's Note:**

> "Over the years, Anne Lister had...received strange letters in the post. Gleaning that her unusual dress and gentlemanly manner were linked somehow to a deviant sexuality, men had written with mocking proposals of relationships or marriage. Anne had grown used to this sort of attention, and seemed able to dismiss it as nonsense. For Miss Walker, whose sense of self was more fragile, it was more threatening." Anne Choma, 139. 
> 
> Title inspired by the Hadestown soundtrack if anyone was curious! Thank you for reading, there's more to come!


End file.
